Tempe citizens group helping to create 2040 plan

General Plan group’s public meetings: Dec. 18, 5:30 p.m. at the Tempe Public Library, 3500 S. Rural Road, with meetings on the first Thursday of each month thereafter. Meeting times and agendas will be posted here.

Eighteen people were appointed to assist in developing the city’s General Plan 2040, but if Joe Salvatore has his druthers, he along with all 164,268 of Tempe’s residents will have a say.

The Tempe City Council last month appointed the General Plan 2040 Community Working Group, which includes 18 residents. Salvatore, who has lived in Tempe for 35 years and was the lead architect for the Tempe Center for the Arts, chairs the group.

The group will help Tempe map goals, objectives and strategies to guide growth and development for the next three decades. The city appoints the group to ensure that the community’s voice is considered as the plan develops.

Salvatore said some recent Tempe development-and-growth decisions have irked residents. Among those that he cited are large apartment complexes that the council approved at Town Lake and in south Tempe despite residents’ concerns. Salvatore is pro-development, but he said building an apartment in the middle of a south Tempe neighborhood of single-family homes was bad planning.

He views the General Plan as an opportunity for residents to influence growth-and-development decisions.

“I would hope that we do get the public very interested in the (General Plan) process and in wanting to come and offer their thoughts on how they see the future of Tempe,” he said.

Salvatore said that he wants opportunities made widely available for residents to offer concerns and feedback so that busy, working residents are not left out.

“I am going to make it a priority that we provide enough time for the public to offer the input,” he said.

As a General Plan is the primary policy guide for how a community will develop, state law requires that cities seek voter approval for changes.

Tempe’s current General Plan 2030 was approved by voters in 2004. Cities are required to re-adopt the existing plan or adopt a new plan on or before the 10th anniversary of the plan’s most recent adoption. Tempe will vote on the plan in May 2014.

As many as 56 people applied to serve on the General Plan working group, said Amanda Nelson, a Tempe spokeswoman. The group’s appointees aim to ensure that residents’ concerns are paramount to the current and future mayor and council members, who will make decisions about how taxpayer money is invested in growth and how residents are affected by development.

Ryan Guzy and Doris Marie Provine said they were compelled to serve on the group after experiencing good and bad development planning in their Tempe neighborhoods.

Guzy, a software engineer, said he has been an advocate for the bicycling community for the past few decades. He lives near downtown Tempe and uses a bicycle as his primary transportation to work in Scottsdale.

Guzy wants Tempe to continue its efforts to develop a multi-modal transit network where residents can choose public transportation, bicycling, walking or driving as viable transportation options. The General Plan should include more bike lanes on major roads, he said.

Provine, a professor emeritus at the Arizona State University School of Social Transformation, said she was among the many residents who lobbied against a Walmart that was built at Southern Avenue and Rural Road.Provine said residents were disappointed with the council’s lack of concern about the traffic that would increase in the residential area with the new Walmart.

Members of a community and the city leaders they elect have a responsibility to “make sure that residential areas stay vibrant and attractive and that you control commercial development in a way that it doesn’t impede people’s ability to have a vibrant neighborhood,” she said.

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